Baseball Statistics in the Steroids Era

BASEBALL STATISTICS IN THE STEROIDS ERA _________________________ By John Dechant _________________________ A THESIS Submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School of the Creighton University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of the Arts in the Department of Liberal Studies. _________________________ OMAHA, NEBRASKA JUNE 27, 2008 iii Abstract This thesis examines the presence of steroids and performance enhancing substances in Major League Baseball from approximately 1988 to 2008. This period, informally known as the “steroids era,” has been the source of great controversy in recent years as more and more information on the matter has been disclosed to the public. In particular, this discussion focuses on the records and statistics of this era. In addition to the players who achieved these statistics, these numbers should be under great scrutiny as their validity is questioned. CONTENTS PREFACE………………………………………………………………………………iv INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter ONE HISTORICAL PATTERNS OF STEROID USE IN BASEBALL………5 The Nature of Performance Enhancing Substances………………5 Early Signs of Steroid Use in Major League Baseball…………....8 Early Major League Baseball Steroid Policy…………………….12 Contemporary Steroid Use in Major League Baseball and the Evolution of Testing Policy……………………………..14 Congressional Intervention and the Mitchell Report…………….23 TWO ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS OF STEROIDS IN BASEBALL……32 The Prohibition Debate………………………………………….32 Records and Statistics……………………………………………46 THREE *ASTERISKS AND DISTINGUISHING MARKS……………………..54 Problems of the Steroids Era…......................................................54 Precedents………………………………………………………..60 Asterisk…………………………………………………………..62 Era Divide………………………………………………………..65 Status Quo………………………………………………………..66 Assessment……………………………………………………….67 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………..70 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………..71 iv Preface My opinion of steroids and performance enhancing substances in baseball changed on February 13, 2008. That day I sat riveted in front of my television watching baseball legend Roger Clemens fend off questions from Congress about his alleged steroid use and association with a man half his size, former trainer Brian McNamee, who sat just a few feet away from Clemens and shared a story with Congress completely contradictory with Clemens’s version of past events. For nearly five hours, I sat and watched the proceedings, only able to pull myself away during the short fifteen-minute recess for a bathroom break and requisite trip to the kitchen. This was baseball in front of Congress in a strange pseudo- confrontation of sport and state, and I could not pull away. My opinion changed when I started thinking about all the milestone records Roger Clemens set during his extensive Major League career. Then I began thinking the same things about Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and others who’d been implicated in various steroid inquiries over the years. It occurred to me that if these players (and others) had taken steroids and performance enhancing drugs, then the records they’d set during their illustrious baseball careers may well have been achieved unethically and in violation of everything associated with good sportsmanship and fair play. Prior to Clemens’s day on Capitol Hill, I must confess I’d been ignorant of the steroids problem in baseball. I’d heard snippets of accusations of wrongdoing over the years but never took much of a stance on the matter. I’d grown up a baseball fan in the heart of the “steroids era,” so when pressed to inject an v opinion, it was more comfortable for me to side with baseball. “It’s just part of the game,” I’d say. Or, “Well, they’re all doing it, so does it really matter anyway?” My personal favorite was, “Until I see evidence of a player testing positive for steroids, there’s no proof.” After listening to Congress pore through the Mitchell Report during Clemens’s hearing, I retrieved the document right away. I reviewed it extensively, and when I was finished I realized two key facts: (1) Steroids had been in baseball for a long time, and (2) many notable records and feats of baseball lore had occurred during this time frame. The relationship between those two facts struck me as indicative of a crisis. How are baseball fans supposed to reconcile a 20-year period of baseball that was tainted because of performance enhancing substances that were used by an indeterminable number of players to assist (in an indeterminable degree) in playing the game? And what of these milestone statistics that were achieved during this era? It seemed fundamentally wrong that a player who used a substance illegally should benefit through the annals of history, while a player who played “by the book” received none of this recognition. What’s more, how are fans to reconcile a record achieved by a steroids user and the player he passed to achieve that record, who played decades earlier, and did so cleanly? Should both players be treated the same? Some people say statistics are for losers, but those people likely aren’t fans of baseball. To lovers of the national pastime, statistics are the lifeblood of their existence: the one, bedrock tool used reliably to measure excellence on the vi diamond. Special thanks to the following individuals who contributed to this project: Dr. Richard White, Dr. Randolph Feezell, Dr. Dennis Mihelich, Dr. Carol Zuegner, and James Dechant. 1 Introduction Sport does not interest only the young; it interests almost everyone. The fact compels a pause. Why are so many so deeply involved, so caught up emotionally in athletic events? Are they in the grip of some basic drive? Do they only express some accidentally acquired cultural habit of admiration for successful violence? Are they really interested in perfection? Does it perhaps give them a special kind of pleasure? -Paul Weiss, Sport: A Philosophical Inquiry Long revered as America’s “national pastime,” the game of baseball has come under fire in recent years as the worst kept, dirty little secret in sports has become public knowledge: Some baseball players use steroids. The seemingly flippant use of these and other performance enhancing substances by current and former players has caused uproars in circles both near and far from the game. For much of the latter part of the twentieth century, the presence of steroids in athletics has been a bone of contention for sports enthusiasts. Steroids and performance enhancing substances have touched virtually every sport in one way or another, and now as we’re beginning a new century of athletics, their presence has never been felt so strongly. As we know today, steroids have been used by professional baseball players for approximately 20 years, in violation of the rules of competition established by Major League Baseball. Not every player in the game used these substances, but their presence was widespread enough to warrant countless investigative articles, multiple Congressional hearings, and one very prominent probe by a former senator. The days of debating whether steroids should be allowed in sports have long passed us; virtually all professional sports organizations do not condone their use. Today our debates are confined to squabbling over the physiological benefits of various substances and deciding which category of “banned substances” to place them in. 2 Prohibiting steroids hasn’t stopped athletes from using them to enhance their athletic skills, and baseball in particular has witnessed its athletes profit from the added strength and endurance these substances help produce. Countless records were shattered during this 20-year period of professional baseball: hitting records, pitching records, fielding records, and more. Players began showing up for games sporting bulkier physiques, home runs flew out of ballparks at an alarming rate, and suspicions ran rampant that this was all being achieved with the help of steroids. So what’s the problem with all this? If you’re keeping the books for Major League Baseball, probably nothing. Fans are flocking to stadiums in greater numbers than ever before, and rarely a summer day goes by without at least one baseball game being telecast on national television. But baseball’s profitability can’t act as judge and jury for the actions of baseball players in light of what we know today. Fundamentally, the use of performance enhancing substances by athletes in an effort to gain a secret advantage over their competitors is contradictory to the principles of fair play and competitive ethics. Robert Simon, in his book Fair Play: The Ethics of Sport, writes that “competition in sports is the attempt to secure victory within the framework set by the constitutive rules.” Some even believe it’s impossible for those who violate the constitutive rules of a game to win or even play the game when they’re cheating these rules.1 The physiological benefits of performance enhancing substances undermine the spirit of competition by lessening the role of an athlete’s skill in the athletic contest and 1Robert L. Simon, Fair Play: The Ethics of Sport, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004), 19. The notion that those who violate the constitutive rules of a game aren’t actually playing the game is referred to as the “incompatibility thesis.” What Simon is referring to here is a common notion in the philosophy of sport. 3 making success or failure the result of how well suited an individual’s body chemistry is to these drugs. In baseball, this creates two major competitive divides. First, on the field of play, players who used these substances had a distinct advantage over those players who didn’t use them. Most forms of steroids have been prohibited in baseball for many years, but this didn’t stop players from using them. Sadly those players who chose to abide by baseball’s rules prohibiting steroids were left at a competitive disadvantage. Second, players of this era who used steroids achieved a level of success in the game that’s not indicative of their true place in baseball history.

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